


Illicit

by Nyssa



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:14:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyssa/pseuds/Nyssa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch takes what he can get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Illicit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kink Bingo 2011 prompt, vanilla kink. Set post-series, in the mid- to late 1980s.

Starsky’s late.

Hutch lights the candles and lays a fire in the bedroom fireplace. It’s a chilly night, and there’s a stiff breeze off the ocean, but he’d want a fire anyway. So cozy, so beautiful, and Starsky looks incredible in firelight. He fantasizes for a moment about lounging in front of the fire, holding Starsky, drinking wine, talking late into the night.

They probably won’t have time for such leisurely pursuits, though. Starsky’s already late, and when he arrives, the urgency will be too much. Still, the fire’s nice.

Hutch collects the wine glasses from the cupboard anyway, and checks the bottle he put in the fridge to chill. Maybe afterward, if they’re not too exhausted from sex and emotional overload and the pressures of the work day, they can have a glass in bed before they fall asleep.

He wonders, with a wry twitch to his mouth, when they became too old to stay awake till dawn, to wring every last drop of sweetness from each other, to drink each other dry.

It’s almost eight. Hutch walks out onto the porch and scans the road for headlights. It’s lonely here, quiet except for the eternal rhythmic boom of the waves beneath the cliff and, in daylight, the high, mournful cries of sea birds. The cottage is on a back road, an hour’s drive up the coast from Bay City, and not many cars pass by. That’s perfect. It’s just what Hutch was looking for when he bought the place a couple of years ago, right after he quit the department. The beauty of nature is a balm to his soul, ever more so as the years go by. And the peaceful isolation is just the atmosphere he needs to write. It helped him finish his first novel last year.

It’s what Starsky needs, too. Hutch remembers the relief, the approval that shone in Starsky’s eyes the first time he saw the place. For Starsky, the house means safety, blessed anonymity.

He’s in the bedroom, poking gently at the fire, when he hears the approaching rumble of an engine, tires crunching on gravel. He listens as Starsky’s station wagon cruises slowly around to the back of the house and stops.

Starsky comes in the front door, though, where it’s possible he could be seen from the road, and as always, Hutch wonders if it’s a gesture of defiance, one small up-yours to the world. Tiny, ineffectual, but there. He’s never asked Starsky about it, and he has no desire to do so now. The sight of his partner (always his partner, always) drives all such trivial considerations from his mind.

The feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him drives out everything else.

One kiss, two, three, before Starsky pulls back. “Sorry I’m late.” His voice is tired. “Had a late meeting with the Chief, I couldn’t get out of it, and then I hadda call Kate….”

Hutch murmurs wordlessly and buries his face against Starsky’s neck. The heady scent of leather from his partner’s jacket fills his nostrils.

“And I gotta leave early, it’s Amy’s birthday tomorrow, and I gotta buy her a present, and I wanna be there when she wakes up….”

Hutch raises his head and cups Starsky’s face in his hands.

Starsky covers the hands with his own. “Babe…” he begins, and his voice breaks.

“Hush,” Hutch whispers, and kisses him.

Starsky’s arms close around him with the desperation of a drowning man clutching for a life preserver, and Hutch feels that surge, that familiar fierce tide of triumph. Starsky’s his now, for a few hours, for however long they have. Hutch doesn’t watch the clock. He leaves that to Starsky. It’s up to Starsky to keep up with the time, to worry about meetings and birthday presents and what to tell Kate. Hutch has learned to live in the moment. From the moment Starsky walks through the door until the moment he leaves, time has no meaning.

They kiss, clutching each other, stumbling backwards into the bedroom. Starsky doesn’t look at the fire or the candles. He shoves the door closed with a foot, and the two of them collapse onto the bed, pulling at each other’s clothes. Starsky’s habitual neatness is nowhere in evidence as he heedlessly drops jacket and shirt and pants to the floor. Hutch rescues his partner’s hated necktie from a pocket of the jacket and loops it behind Starsky’s neck, pulling the curly head down until their lips meet again, hungry, eager.

They roll back and forth on the bed, and Starsky’s hands and mouth are everywhere, and everything. Hutch can’t think about anything else, and he doesn’t try. Starsky straddles him, curls over him, bends down, and Hutch groans as wet, sucking heat engulfs him. He struggles to turn himself, to get into position to reciprocate, to pay Starsky back for this dangerous ecstasy, but Starsky puts a restraining hand on his shoulder and pulls off. Bereft, Hutch’s hips keep rocking of their own accord while he listens to Starsky fumbling in the drawer of the nightstand.

There’s a crinkle of foil, and Hutch closes his eyes. He hates this. He understands it, but he hates it, resents it with a ferocity that curdles sourly in his belly and weakens his erection. Starsky has to keep Kate safe. That means she’s here, in their bed. It means Hutch has to think about her, about why they’re doing this. It means he can’t pretend things haven’t changed, that times haven’t changed, that his naked flesh can ever again join with Starsky’s the way it used to, before.

It doesn’t feel so different. It’s almost as good, physically. But symbolically, it cuts him to the heart.

He looks up at the ceiling as Starsky rolls the condom on, looks back again too soon, and catches a glimpse of his partner’s eyes before Starsky averts them. Hutch reaches out and brushes the graying curls back from Starsky’s forehead. At the touch, Starsky draws a gasping little breath and seizes Hutch’s hand, pressing his lips fiercely to the palm, eyes screwed shut.

The condom’s lubricated, and Starsky never needed much help anyway. Hutch enters him easily. Staying in is something else again, as Starsky bucks frantically under him, biting the pillow, moaning. Hutch braces himself, grabbing at Starsky’s shoulders, Starsky’s arms, scrabbling for purchase. He doesn’t know what Starsky tells Kate, how he explains the small, fingertip-shaped bruises. He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t want to punish Starsky, not even on a subconscious level. The thought of it sickens him. But Starsky always liked it rough. It used to be play. Now it’s something else, and Hutch doesn’t want to think about that. He closes his eyes and fucks.

Starsky comes with a choked, painful cry, his hand milking himself, his body arching. Hutch groans, his thrusts becoming short, desperate jabs as the spasming muscles squeeze him. He empties himself and they lie still, the room silent but for their heaving breaths and the quiet, crackling fire.

Hutch kisses Starsky’s shoulders. Starsky reaches out blindly, finds Hutch’s hand, and laces their fingers together. Hutch raises their joined hands to his lips, and the gold of Starsky’s wedding band gleams, brutal in the firelight.

 

*****

 

Hutch lies on his back, watching Starsky get dressed. The fire’s died down to a pile of glowing coals, and the sun is the merest hint outside the window.

“What are you going to get Amy?”

Starsky glances up from buttoning his shirt, smiling as always at mention of his daughter’s name. Hutch knows just how much Starsky adores his children.

“Dunno yet. She likes bracelets and pink shoes and stuff with ponies. I’ll go wherever I can find that’s open early and hope they got something.” He looks around the room. “Where’s….”

Hutch searches in the sheets, finds Starsky’s tie, and tosses it to him. Starsky gives him a sheepish look and stuffs the tie into his pocket. A captain of detectives may have to wear the damn things on duty, but not the rest of the time.

There are a lot of things captains of detectives have to do, and a lot of things they can’t do, or be. Hutch knows all those things by heart. He wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night thinking about them.

He pulls on a robe and follows Starsky out to his car. In the gray pre-dawn light, he glimpses a child’s car seat in the back of the station wagon, one of those contraptions all kids seem to be locked into these days, even if only for a trip around the block. The days of bouncing on mommy’s lap and crawling over seat backs seem to be over.

Hutch does a moment’s calculation. Little Kenneth must be almost two now.

“This is a beautiful place, Hutch.” Starsky’s leaning against the car, eyes roving over the trees to the rocky cliff and out to the ocean. “I know I say that every time, but – damn, it’s beautiful.”

Hutch smiles. “I can remember when you weren’t exactly nuts about the wonders of nature.”

Starsky turns to him, eyes bright. “That ain’t true,” he says softly, and he reaches out and touches Hutch’s face. “I’ve always loved natural beauty.”

Hutch feels something twist inside him. He slides his arms under Starsky’s jacket and pulls him close. They stand like that for a long time, and when Starsky backs away, Hutch feels wetness on his skin where Starsky’s face had rested against his neck.

Starsky clears his throat, a painful sound, opens the car door and slides behind the wheel. He looks straight ahead. “I don’t know when I can come back.” He pauses a moment, and then turns pleading eyes to Hutch. “But it’ll be soon, somehow. I promise, babe, it’ll be soon.”

“Yeah,” Hutch whispers.

Starsky hesitates. “You could come and see us, sometime. Kate likes you.”

Hutch is silent. He used to be a good actor. He used to be convincing in just about any undercover role. That was a long time ago. Somewhere along the way, he lost the capacity to be in the same room with Starsky and pretend not to love him.

Starsky takes the hand Hutch is resting on the car door and kisses it, hard, before he turns deliberately away and twists the key in the ignition. Hutch steps back and watches as the station wagon rolls slowly around the corner of the house. Listening, he hears it pick up speed as it reaches the road, and then the sound fades gradually into the distance.

Hutch goes back inside. He can’t quite face stripping the bed yet. Instead he puts a pot of coffee on and sits down in front of his new word processor. He’s three-fourths of the way through his second novel, and his publisher’s eager to see it. He writes mysteries, police procedurals. His hero is hard-boiled, sardonic, a recovering alcoholic who’s quick with his fists and quicker with the ladies. He’s a composite, an idealized composite, of many cops Hutch has known through the years. He is definitely not in love with his partner.

Hutch closes his eyes and takes a long moment to clear his mind of everything he wishes he could change and can’t. Then he opens the file and starts to write.


End file.
